Lara Stefansdottir
lara@ismennt.is
Bilder: Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson, "New Dimensions".
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IT in Iceland
Education in Iceland is now changing by use of the Internet, among others.
"While Britain is inhabited by the Britons and Sweden by the Swedes, Iceland is inhabited by 265.000 individuals" is a common saying in Iceland. When focusing on IT in education this saying instantly comes into mind. There has been a lack of official strategy and political interest, curriculums do not handle the matter and recent strategies in education have not focused on the issue.
This is changing right now due to a new Minister of Education and Culture, Bjorn Bjarnason (http://www.centrum.is/bb/) who has taken action which will imply that the first IT plan for education will be published early this year.
One might think that lack of instructions from the top would lead to little activity in the schools but that is far from true. The Ministry has often supported projects and pioneer work in the field that has allowed teachers to develop ideas.
Internet
One of these fields is the use of Internet in schools. In Iceland the one who originally introduced it was a schoolmaster in a little village in northern Iceland with only around 150 inhabitants and his work grew to become The Icelandic Educational Network – ismennt connecting 90% of the schools to Internet, http://www.ismennt.is. At first financial support came from The Teachers Association as well as the Ministry. Joint interest of teachers themselves as well as the support from the Ministry made it possible.
Connection is however not everything, 90% of the teachers have not been using Internet and not all of those who use it are doing so with students but as means of supporting their teaching and profession. Approx. 20% of the teachers in primary schools have participated in a variety of in-service courses so the interest is huge.
"An upper secondary school teacher in Akranes, is working on the development of a nation-al litterature WWW project with her students"
Many teachers who have been using Internet with their students claim that it is extra work and sometimes in addition to what they are obliged to do. We still have a lot to learn about transforming education in relation with the information society but we are on our way.
Harpa Hreinsdottir, an upper secondary school teacher in Akranes, Western Iceland, is working on the development of a national litterature WWW project with her students, http://rvik.ismennt.is/~harpa/forn. Instead of writing as many essays as earlier, the students create WWW pages on sagas from Western Iceland as well as mythology. After the first term the students are very satisfyed with the work. It has been linked to the international Viking project which is coordinated from Norway and Scotland.
Other teachers have either created WWW on their subject or students create WWW about their school or projects.
Educational software and Nordic cooperation
Iceland does benefit from the Nordic cooperation, at first in Dataprogramgruppen, now IDUN. The program on educational software exchange as well as many conferences and seminars have supported the development of IT in education. It is obvious that a nation not bigger than Iceland has difficulties to carry out many educational programs. Since the culture in other Nordic countries is so close to ours it is often easy to adjust the nordic educational software so that it fits in the schools.
Namsgagnastofnun is responsible for producing educational software as well as educational material in other terms. Although not much of educational software has been made, many interesting programs have been developed under the supervision of Namsgagnastofnun. Recently they published their first multimedia CD-ROM called "Handbook on Iceland" with pictures, maps, text and sound.
Pedagogical thoughts
To many people change is difficult and it is difficult to find the reason for changing. Often this is related to the issue how people look at things. It can either be a problem or a possibility while beeing the same issue all the time.
It is not easy to change teaching while it might be easy to change learning if the teacher changes his methods. The teacher likes to "know everything" and to think that his job is to transfer that knowledge into the students mind. Can a student use knowledge that has only been told, written down and checked on a test? Our societies change so fast due to the changes in information technology that it is very likely that no matter how well we teach or how well the students learn that these methods are not enough to prepare a human beeing for working in modern society. The teacher has to adjust to the fact that he/she doesn't have to know everything but support learning.
Internet can break those walls and create new possibilities in the learning environment. Not just for students but also for teachers who would like to increase their knowledge. A teacher who would like to keep up with the society that his or her students are going to take part in cannot use the same methods or same material during a lifetime of teaching. It is very important to create an environment for a teacher to practice lifelong learning. Without that environment a teacher has limited possibilities in growing within the teaching profession.
The whole picture
It is not enough to get tools to play with in education and have individual projects and pioneer work. It is not better to have strategies or commands that do not interest the schools, the teachers or the students. The whole educational society has to cooperate. The pioneer teachers need support, strategy has to be formed to provide a flexible frame and retraining of teachers is important. If one of these elements is missing we are likely to fail. A seed can fall and start to grow but it needs care and support to become a garden.
Lara Stefansdottir
P.O.Box 7099, 127 Reykjavik, Iceland
E-post: lara@ismennt.is
Tel: 354-561-7077
http://rvik.ismennt.is/~lara
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